The Transit of Venus: A historical perspective

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How the transit of Venus has aided scientific discovery.

Apart from being a beautiful spectacle in the sky, the Transit of Venus has provided scientists through the ages with opportunities to find out more about our place in the universe.

This video from Transitofvenus.org provides the history of past transists and how astronomers used it to make calculations about the nature of our solar system, from measuring the size of Venus to determining Earth's distance from the sun.

The rare alignment between Sun, Venus and the Earth will also be aiding scientists in the upcoming transit on 5/6 June 2012. As venus partially obscures the Sun's light, scientists using the Kepler space observatory will be aided in their search for distant exoplanets.

You can find more resources relating to the transit of Venus in our forthcoming blog post, or watch this video from Andrew Steele explaining what happens in terms of orbits during a transit.